"Two days ago, the german "defense minister" proclaimed that the german military no longer has the defense of the country as the primary goal, but instead has the intention to protect access to trade and natural resources in other countries. That's what I call openness about the intentions - the imperialism is more evident then. Maybe they should also merge the defense ministry with the ministry of economics? Today, the message seems to have reached the soldiers - they already start shooting at protesting civilians.

Samstag, 14. Mai 2011

"from TEPCO's press conference on May 12...regarding the water level in the Containment Vessel of the Reactor 1:"We are assuming most of the water escaped the Containment Vessel into the surrounding reactor building. However, there is no water in the northwest corner of the basement of the reactor building, as far as we can see by the camera. We don't know where the water has gone. Possibly, it may have gone to the reactor building, the turbine building, or the waste disposal facility. ...The water may be escaping from the bottom of the Containment Vessel or the RPV, but we haven't identified the location."" (via ex-skf)
"TEPCO vermutet, dass das in den RDB eingespeiste Wasser über eine Leckage aus dem RDB fließt und dadurch der Füllstand nicht die Kernunterkante erreicht.....
Die Einspeisemenge in den RDB soll erhöht werden. Nach Presseangaben erklärte NISA, falls die gemessenen Daten richtig seien, wäre der Kernbrennstoff geschmolzen und befände sich auf dem Boden des RDB." (via grs 12.5.2011, 12:30)

"Ah - some hundred tons of radioactive water - small things like that are easily lost, right? But we will of course not say that the core has molten though the reactor vessel and containment and that all the water we pour on top of the mess is going straight through the whole thing and into the groundwater..."
(rough translation of the german part: TEPCO assumes that the water level does not reach the fuel rods. NISA concludes that the rods have molten and collected at the bottom of the vessel)

Just serves as a reminder that fracking for gas is not a good idea. Nothing new, but good that this is confirmed and peer reviewed now. Oh and its of course not just the explosion risk (or burning tap water as in the movie "Gasland") but also that methane is a much mor powerful greenhouse gas than CO2 - and certainly that methane will not stay in the groundwater or rivers for long...
But yeah - they seriously used the word "sustainable" in context with shale-gas extraction - what a misuse of that word.

Montag, 9. Mai 2011

"The neural network used by Grasemann and his adviser, Professor Risto Miikkulainen, is called DISCERN. Designed by Miikkulainen, DISCERN is able to learn natural language. In this study it was used to simulate what happens to language as the result of eight different types of neurological dysfunction." (via scienceblog)

So scientists finally manage to create artificial intelligence of some sorts, at least a neural network that can learn language - and what do they do with it? They let it go insane. I get some slight recall of "Hal 9000" and "Skynet". It seems it took only rather slight changes to create schizophrenia, a condition related to paranoia. So creating artificial intelligent neural networks to control industrial processes or military applications - probably a great idea if they can actually become paranoid schizophreniacs...

Dienstag, 3. Mai 2011

"NAOMI KLEIN: Remaking people, shocking them into obedience. This is a story about that powerful idea. In the 1950s, it caught the attention of the CIA. The agency funded a series of experiments. Out of them was produced a secret handbook on how to break down prisoners. The key was using shock to reduce adults to a childlike state."